• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Dan Guerrero
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • South Bay Compass
    • Tia Tenopia
    • Tales of Torres
    • Who You Talkin’ To Fanny?
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
      • Latinopia Guest Blogs
        • El Blogero Sincero
      • Julio Medina Serendipity

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Dan Guerrero
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • South Bay Compass
    • Tia Tenopia
    • Tales of Torres
    • Who You Talkin’ To Fanny?
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
      • Latinopia Guest Blogs
        • El Blogero Sincero
      • Julio Medina Serendipity
You are here: Home / Blogs / TALES OF TORRES 11.22.15 THE LATEST TRUMP PENDEJADA

TALES OF TORRES 11.22.15 THE LATEST TRUMP PENDEJADA

November 20, 2015 by JT

The Latest Pendejada from Donald Trump

Donald-Trump-CC-Sage-Skidmore_200Donald Trompa is at it again. This time his pendejada has to do with a moronic plan to round up immigrants and ship them out of the country.
In a typically off-handed and simplistic utterance, presidential wanna-be Donald Trump tossed out the idea of forming a huge “deportation force” to round up immigrants and ship them out of the country. The notion is as immoral as it is impractical. Ridiculous and wacko are two words that come to mind. My parents, who came to this country legally from Mexico in the 1920s, were the victims of a massive deportation round-up similar to what carnival barker Trump is proposing. (Thanks for that one, Governor O’Malley.) My parents did nothing wrong, but they were made to feel like hunted criminals. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican descendants endured the same fate.

With his familiar smirk, Trump claimed a massive deportation of immigrants could be carried out simply and effortlessly. He pointed to the effort by the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s to send Mexicans back to Mexico. Trump called it a success. It wasn’t.

The policy was known officially by the racist name “Operation Wetback.” It was a misguided policy and the program itself was a disaster. It would be no different this time around. Trump wants to round up some eleven million presumably undocumented immigrants and ship them out of the country.

Obama-Speaking_200President Obama responded to Trump’s asinine assertions by saying, “I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money is going to come from – it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that.” And more to the point, the president said: “Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children. Nobody thinks that that is realistic. But more importantly, that’s not who we are as Americans.”

Let’s hope that last phrase is true. But history shows that we Americans have misplaced our moral compass on occasion. (My stepson’s Japanese American grandparents were thrown into concentration camps during WWII; but that’s another story.) History shows we can conveniently forget who we are as Americans. Xenophobic policies have been tried in this country before, with tragic results. The general public in America doesn’t always know its history. But because of Trump’s foolish call for a “deportation force” people are beginning to learn about the ill-fated “Operation Wetback” of the 1950s. Ya era tiempo.

Luis-Torres-Parents_200

Luis Torres’s parents were victims of an unconstitutional deportation.

But I think it’s a sure bet most folks don’t know about the even more pernicious historical phenomenon called the Mexican Repatriation. My parents, Marcelino Torres and Aurora Chavira Torres, were victims of that insidious, monumentally unconstitutional policy.

The sinister Mexican Repatriation was carried out by the Herbert Hoover administration. It began in 1929 and continued for the better part of the 1930s. The U.S. military and local police forces carried out massive wholesale raids in Los Angeles and throughout the country in an attempt to “send the Mexicans back to Mexico.” Without even a nod to the presumed guarantees of the Constitution, authorities rounded up more than one million men, women and children – often at gunpoint — and sent them “back” to Mexico. Mexicans were the convenient scapegoats for the joblessness and dislocation of the Great Depression.

“They are taking our jobs.” Sound familiar?

Decade-of-Betrayal_200Historian Francisco Balderrama takes note of this in his comprehensive book about the Repatriation. In “Decade of Betrayal,” he writes: “The wanton disregard of legal constraints in denying deportees their constitutional rights was so flagrant that groups as diverse as the Los Angeles Bar Association, the Wickersham Commission, industrialists and ranchers felt compelled to condemn the illegal tactics, but to no avail.” (The Wickersham Commission was charged with monitoring potential violations of civil rights.)

Most of those who were forcibly deported were actually United States citizens. Most of the children who were sent “back” to Mexico had been born here. Photos by iconic photographer Dorothy Lange reveal Mexican immigrants being herded into railroad boxcars. The images are disquietingly evocative of trains bound for Auschwitz and Treblinka.

When the Great Depression grabbed this country by the throat my father was a copper miner in Morenci, Arizona. My mother swept floors and cooked meals in a “company town” boarding house there. Police were breaking down doors and shoving Mexicans onto trains and buses. Entire families were deposited at the Mexican border. My mother told me those stories. Rather than wait to be arrested for the “crime” of being Mexican, my parents – along with their two infant children — “voluntarily” went back to Mexico.

Repatriations-Arizona-1930s_200

Mexicans and Chicanos being deported to Mexico from Arizona.

A few years later they made their way back to the United States, eventually coming to California to toil as farmworkers. My family eventually settled in Los Angeles where I was born. The bitterness of the Repatriation never left my mother’s memory. When I was a kid in the 1960s she would sometimes recall el viejo diablo Hoover.” She would also refer to FDR as el hombre bueno. Roosevelt ended the Mexican Repatriation program as WWII dramatically changed the dynamic of the time.

So, today before we embark on a policy of repatriation with a Trump-inspired “deportation force,” we might want to examine our country’s history carefully. There is no such thing as a “humane” policy of massive deportations, the kind of hair-brained scheme being proposed by Donald Trump.

_____________________________________
Luis_Torres_Seated5_220Journalist Luís Torres is the author of “Doña Julia’s Children.” He teaches journalism at Los Angeles Mission College.

Filed Under: Blogs, Tales of Torres Tagged With: 1930s Repatriations, Anti-immigrant hysteria, Donald Trump, Luis R.. Torres, Tales of Torres

POLITICAL SALSA Y MAS with SALOMON BALDENEGRO 2.09.19 “THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY”

February 9, 2019 By Tia Tenopia

The good, the bad, and the ugly… In the immortal words of Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Dickens pretty much captures how I’m perceiving the political world around me. It’s an emotional see-saw: […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA del ZOCOTROCO 2.03.19 “COFINA – CORPORACION del FONDO DE INTERES APREMIANTE

February 3, 2019 By Tia Tenopia

COFINA (Corporacion del Fondo de Interes Apremiante) “Guerra Galáctica” por “Aberración Nefasta” En este espacio irredento, donde lo divino se confunde con lo maldito, el sufrimiento culmina en éxtasis y lo sublime alterna con lo ridículo, nos damos margen amplio para titular nuestras tragedias. Guerra Galáctica y Aberración Nefasta sugieren la magnitud del drama que […]

MIS PENSAMIENTOS with ALFREDO SANTOS 02.03.19

February 3, 2019 By Tia Tenopia

Bienvenidos otra vez a La Voz Newspaper. In this month’s we are pleased to bring you an interview with Mayor Pro-tem, Delia Garza. This former Austin firefighter, turned attorney is slowly climbing the ladder of public service. As the recently elected Mayor Pro-tem on the Austin City Council we expect to see and hear more […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO 01.26.19 “SAN SEBASTIAN Y HAMILTON, MIRANDA Y FALLON”

January 26, 2019 By Tia Tenopia

Burundanga de Zocotroco Para iniciar el año vuelven a escena las fiestas en la Calle San Sebastián cerrando el extenso periodo navideño que celebramos acá. Un gentío en modalidad de jolgorio que despliega vibrante una parte de lo que somos, un pueblo fiestero. Sería injusto y prejuiciado adscribir a un solo rasgo pues los pueblos […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA MUSIC RUBÉN MARTÍNEZ “IN THE SHADOWS OF BLACK MESA”

By Tia Tenopia on July 28, 2013

Rubén Martínez is a journalist, author and musician whose recent book “Desert America” chronicles, among other things, the high rate of heroin addiction among Hispanos in New Mexico’s rural communities. While living in Velarde, New Mexico Rubén was able to witness the destructive force of addiction in the lives of his two neighbors, José and […]

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

LATINOPIA TEATRO “ENRIQUE’S JOURNEY2”

By Tia Tenopia on December 8, 2014

“Enrique’s Journey” is a Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative by Sonia Nazario about the harrowing experiences of a seventeen-year-old Honduran boy who sets out alone to travel to the United States to find his  mother whom he hasn’t seen in more than a dozen years.  The riveting true story was adapted for the stage by Anthony J. […]

Category: LATINOPIA TEATRO, Theater

LATINOPIA WORD “DOÑA JULIA’S CHILDREN”

By Tia Tenopia on November 24, 2013

Latinopia’s blogger Luis R. Torres has recently published a biography of Mexican American education activist Vahac Mardirosian. It was Mardirosian who led the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee, the activist group made up of parents, teachers and students following the 1968 East Los Angeles high school Walk-outs. In later years Mardirosian founded the Parent Institute for […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

© 2019 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin